Filters...

[DamienD]

Good morning people,

I have a few questions relating to the use of Filters with WinUAE...

Basically I've notice that most games seeem to be displayed making use of most available space with a resoultion of 640x480. Although for some games this isn't the case (e.g. Dragon's Lair series, Project X, Assasin etc). These require a higher resolution to display everything on screen...

I found that if I use Windows mode (which has a resolution of 720x568) these games seem to fill the screen as best as possible.

Unfortunately my video card doesn't support a resolution of 720x568 (no surprise there really) so what I want to do is use Filters to stretch then centre the screen to what it would be like in Windows mode (except of course you won't see my Desktop underneath)...

I have a few question that I'm hoping a few people can give me their options on:

1. Does anybody know of any games that use more than 720x568 (hopefully not as I'm going to make my default based on this)?

2. If using Filters, does this have any negative effects such as performance (on the test I did I couldn't see any)?

3. I like Scanlines so will probably use either Direct3D or OpenGL, what is the difference and which one would you recommend using?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by DamienD

1. Does anybody know of any games that use more than 720x568 (hopefully not as I'm going to make my default based on this)?

720x568 is good enough, note that not even 720x568 is fully visible on regular TV or video monitor (without adjusting)

2. If using Filters, does this have any negative effects such as performance (on the test I did I couldn't see any)?

Depends on selected filter and display card and drivers. (yes, not too good answer..)

3. I like Scanlines so will probably use either Direct3D or OpenGL, what is the difference and which one would you recommend using?

Again, select the one which works better. Display card/driver specific again.

[DamienD]

Thank you for your reply Toni, much appreciated.

[DamienD]

Hmmm, been playing around for the past hour trying to come up with a default that would fit most 720x568 suitable games using filters...

Decided to give up as the games vary too much in terms of being centred, size etc...

[Chuckles]

Another approach (the one I use) is possible if your video card supports custom resolutions. Using a utility such as PowerStrip, you can define custom resolutions that match the Amiga's native screen resolutions, both NTSC and PAL. Once defined, you simply have to figure out which games need which resolutions, and select accordingly. The "up" side to the approach is that the games then tend to use the full area of your monitor, but the "down" side is that some folks have reported problems using utilities like PowerStrip before. It works perfectly on my setup, but your mileage may vary.

[DamienD]

Hey Chuckles,

Thank you for your reply. I'm sure I've read a thread somwhere here about PowerStrip... I didn't really understand how it works though.

Is it an app that is installed through Windows?

or

I'm probably horribly wrong but, I thought I read somehere that you create an Amiga HDF with WB and then install this there? I haven't tried this as I haven't really got my head around hdf and whd files yet...

Any more info would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

[OddbOd]

PowerStrip is a video configuration tweaker for Windows, it allows you to alter the internal display parameters of your video card in a way that cannot be done with most standard display drivers. The most common use is for creating custom screen modes and in this regard it is very powerful, this of course comes at a price, you may cause severe display problems by using inappropriate settings.

I think you may be confusing PowerStrip with Picasso96 which is a display driver framework for the Amiga which allows the use of third-party graphics adaptors like the Picasso board, which it was originally designed for. WinUAE includes a "fake" graphics driver for use with Picasso96 which enables your emulated Amiga to treat the Windows display as if it was a graphics card plugged into a real Amiga.

[DamienD]

Cheers OddbOd. That makes things much clearer. You're right, was somehow getting Picasso96 mixed up there...

Hmmm, thought this was the case with "may cause severe display problems by using inappropriate settings". Do you think it's worth the risk?

[DamienD]

At home now and I downloaded an evaluation copy of PowerStrip v3.62.

Installed PowerStrip, added a resolution of 720x576, tested it out and I must say that it absolutely rocks...

I have 2 laptops at home which are:

*** IBM ThinkPad T30 (with a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics card)

*** Toshiba Satellite 4600 (with a Trident Video Accelerator CyberBlade-XP v6.4022 graphics card)

The Toshiba has always supported a resolution of 720x568 but the IBM didn't. It does now...

This is exactly the desired effect I was trying to achieve via filters. Games that I used to have set to a resolution of 800x600 had quite a bit of "wasted" space. With a resolution of 720x572 this is much improved.

Thank you all for the advice and comments...

PS. For anybody who doesn't have a resolution of 720x576 set and is using 800x600, attached is a screen capture of each (using Superfrog as the game). Check out the difference!: great

[Anubis]

I was under impression that amiga's native resolution is 640 x 512 or 640 x 256

I will check that windows utility, as I'm planning to build WinUAE system out of mine old system that needs new processor (XP2100). Thanks!

[OddbOd]

It is, but remember that the Amiga was originally designed to be connected to a TV set (or composite monitor which is essentially the same) and televisions do not have square pixels, they are slightly elongated vertically. This is different to a PC monitor which does have square pixels, so, to get a picture the correct shape on a PC monitor requires compensating for the difference hence the option in UAE to correct the aspect ratio. The alternative is to do what DamienD has done and try to compensate for it manually, a miserable task which involves far too much mathematics for me, doing it by eye should be good enough for most people.

Edit: Toni is right this post made no sense at all Those resolutions both fit within the central area that is completely visible on any TV set or composite monitor without requiring any size adjustment to ensure that nothing ever gets cut off. Like he said the Amiga can draw over a larger area which some games/demos do, 720x568 is big enough to show the entire display area including the overscan area around the edges.

[Toni Wilen]

Overscan modes have nothing to do with aspect ratios.

There are 312 lines in PAL, 284 "visible" lines, the rest is hidden in vertical blanking. Normally only 256 are used because most "extra" lines can't be completely seen on regular TV.

Same with horizontal except there are no real horizontal pixels in analog TV signal. Anyway, Amiga can output max about 752 pixels in hires but most extra pixels can't be seen on TVs.

Easy to test with overscan options in WB and using 1081/1084/8833 video monitor's display adjustments.

[DamienD]

Definitely not going to be using filters now... Was going crazy trying to get a default which suited most games

As you've said OddbOd "a miserable task which involves far too much mathematics"...

I've very happy with the now supported 720x576 resolution for my ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (thanks to PowerStrip).

[Chuckles]

I haven't been able to keep up with this thread since my last post as I've been working against a deadline at work, but I'm glad to see that you checked out PowerStrip and that it works well for you. I thought I'd add a bit of info about screen resolutions based on my own experience creating and using them with WinUAE.

As you probably are aware, screen resolutions differ between PAL and NTSC Amigas, and you'll find some games that require the larger PAL screen sizes, though my experience has been that a slight majority use only the NTSC resolution (even though the game may be intended for a PAL Amiga). If your video card and monitor both support them, you can create resolutions simulating both, and use whichever one works best with any given game. Whether NTSC or PAL, some games may make use of the overscan area, and those will need a larger resolution, but the majority don't make use of overscan.

For the typical NTSC game that does not use overscan, I use a custom resolution of 640x400, with the display settings set to leave "Lo-res" unchecked, and with line mode set to either doubled or scanline (depending on your preference). With these settings, the playfield uses almost the entire visible portion of the monitor.

Many Amiga games though were written to run in lo-res mode, and you can run the same game with a custom resolution of 320x200 with lo-res checked, and with line mode set to normal, and this also will use almost the entire visible portion of the monitor with no visible difference in graphic quality. For people like myself who run WinUAE on a slower machine (a PIII/700), using the lower resolution seems to have the added benefit of reducing the amount of work that WinUAE has to do to manage the display, and this can make the difference between seeing CPU usage exceed 100% or not. For non-overscan games then, my bag of tricks would include custom resolutions of 640x400 and 320x200 for NTSC, along with 640x512 and 320x256 for PAL.

Even with the custom resolutions, I do sometimes find titles that seem to be a bit stubborn about the positioning of the playfield within the available screen resolution, and in these cases the filters do come in handy for me. If the top, bottom, left or right side of the playfield is cut off, you can simply enable the null filter and then use the horizontal and vertical position sliders to position it properly.

Hope this helps, and have fun tinkering with the new toy.

[Mad-Matt]

I quite Like the use of filters in winuae. I have 640x480 (doubleline) mode set to be as near as normal res without messing about.

The filter allows whatever the game res to be scaled into that mode and doesnt look to bad as 640x480 isnt to far out either way. The slight bilinier blur helps as amiga low res gfx dont look nice on vga monitor (remember how much better doom looked in its native res on an amiga and tv ). Scanlines used to make it not too blury but not so many as to look to ..liney.

I also attached some superfrog grabs just to show what im using looks like. Only issue with the filter is that the screen isnt always centred - might need to tweak filter setting for odd game. (but thats like playing on tv too

Lastly, I know this isnt really the right thread to ask, but why has winua got two Sound settings which appear to be exactly the same ? (Sound emulation in chipset prefs and host sound. I have both set to 100% accurate, but seems a little odd that the settings are labeled the same.

[Chuckles]

Speaking of asking questions in what might not be the right thread, all of the Superfrog title screen shots in this thread brings a question to mind. Frogs are reptiles, and as such, they are hatched from eggs. So why does Superfrog have a belly-button? I don't even want to think about what sort of strange cross breeding experiments could have led to that!

[DamienD]

LOL